Job Satisfaction of Chandigarh Police

 

Ajay Kumar

Research Scholar, Centre for Police Administration, University Institute of Emerging Areas in Social Sciences, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

 

ABSTRACT:

Job satisfaction is the important aspect of any organization whether it is public or private organization. Police is the one of the important agency of criminal justice system which serves the community and enforces the law and order in the society. Every organization facing problem in one or another form and the police organization is not an exception. There are numerous studies which are focused on job satisfaction of the employee in private organization but the research in the field of police agency is not up to that level where it should be. In the light of this the present study aims to find out the job satisfaction among non gazette police personnel in Chandigarh which is one of the planned and educated cities of the India. The primary data was collected from 50 non gazette police personnel of Chandigarh. The sample was chosen by simple random sampling method. The main tool used to collect the data was the questioner which was framed in structured manner. The secondary data is also used to assist the theoretical framework. The purpose of this research paper is to examine the various organizational elements that have its effect on job satisfaction or job dissatisfaction of the police personnel. The variables in the questionnaire are organizational policy and administration, attitude of supervisors, pay, relationship with colleague, working conditions, time for personal life, promotion, achievement, recognition and other skill enhancement facilities.

 

 

The effectiveness of any organization depends upon the satisfaction of its employees. Job satisfaction is an major issue to be discussed by the Human Resource Management which play an important role with approach of the optimum utilization of resources and by so it increased the productivity and profit also and that depends on the level of satisfaction of the employee. Job satisfaction refers to an employee’s general attitude towards his job. It is a nebulous concept. It is hard to provide an acceptable definition. Vroom has defined it as the positive orientation of an individual towards the work role which he is presently occupying. This can be easily phrased as “an individual likes more aspects of his work than he dislikes.” It refers to an employee’s general attitude towards his job. Job satisfaction refers to the extent that the working environment meets the needs and values of employee and the individual’s.

 

Happock (1935) stated that job satisfaction is any combination of psychological, physiological and environmental circumstances that cause a person truthful to say “I am satisfied with my job.”  Blum (1942) found the concept of Job Satisfaction as an individual phenomenon. According to him the job satisfaction is those generalized attitudes which arise from specific job factors, group relationship and individual adjustment.

 

Job Satisfaction of Police:

There have been numerous studies on job satisfaction in private industry but in the research on job satisfaction in the field of criminal justice system is totally neglected specially in India. In India police organization is facing so many problems regarding their strength, pay, work culture and stress etc. the population of the country is so high as compared to the ratio of police personnel in the country which create a situation of problems for the police agency in enforcing law and order. The factors of stress for the police personnel can be from outside like violence and crime in the society or it can be from the interior part of the organization and job itself. The exterior and interior factors of the stress lead to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction among the police personnel. The satisfaction of police personnel should be high towards their job and organization so that they can serve the community with more effectiveness. In case the police personnel are dissatisfied, they are not good for themselves, department as well as the community where they serve. The police personnel with the negative attitudes toward work and police organization can adversely affect the job performance in both the quantity and quality of their services.. The poor performance can impact on the police-community relations by adversely affecting attitudes of public toward the police (Buzawa, Austin, and Bannon, 1994). In addition to a moral obligation to demonstrate concern for its employees and promote positive work-related attitudes, job satisfaction promotes lower stress levels and, accordingly, fewer symptoms of stress (e.g., absenteeism, burnout, and alcoholism) (Hoath et al., 1998: 338).

 

The theory of Herzberg two factors had beautifully defined the foundation of the Job Satisfaction. Herzberg found that the set of factors involved in the job satisfaction events were entirely different from the set of factors involved in the job dissatisfaction events. He called the former set of factors as satisfiers (Motivators or growth factors or intrinsic factors) and the later set of factors as dis-satisfiers (hygiene factors or maintenance factors or extrinsic factors). This theory developed by Herzberg (1959) states that job satisfaction consisted of two separate independent dimensions: the first was related to Job satisfaction and the second dimension to job dissatisfaction (p.370). The factors of satisfaction and job dissatisfaction needs to be identifies so that in case of dissatisfaction regarding any particular job or other factors,  the organization after identifying the problem can solve it and improve the job satisfaction of police personnel. The theory of Herzberg states that advancement, growth, achievement, recognition and the work itself can lead to satisfaction, while supervision, and salary, policy and work conditions can lead to dissatisfaction. Through the application of this theory, this research work has been undertaken.

 

Review of literature on Job satisfaction of Police:

According to Zhao et all ,the five dimensions of the work environment, when combined, accounted for over 40 percent of the variance in Job satisfaction”(P. 165), and so the police job satisfaction can not only identified from the demography surveys. Adeyoju and Aremu (2003) studied the effect of mentoring on job satisfaction. The study was conducted on Nigerian Police from the six geo political zones. It was found that mentored male police were more committed to the job and mentored female police were more satisfied with their job as compared to the male counterpart and other factors like promotion, regular payment of salaries, allowances also motivate the police.  Khurana and Rai (2006) examined the relationship between organization role stress and job satisfaction of paramilitary personnel. He found that role stagnation is a significant predictor of job satisfaction. The high organizational role stress and low job satisfaction of police personnel adverse affects the performance. In the study of Buzawa(1984), the impact of affirmative action’s was shown to be highly associated with job satisfaction under certain circumstances. It was found that forty percent respondents were satisfied with their roles as police officers and the other fifty two percent of officers were not satisfied with the prestige of agency within the city government. According to Brough and Frame (2004) it was found that no opportunity for advancement and amount of leave taken were negatively associated with the job satisfaction of police officers. Finlay et al. (1995) found that the level of job satisfaction is increased among police officers when their professionalism is recognized and the autonomy is not disturbed by the bureaucratic formalities. Aremu (2006) found that demographic variables had not any significant impact on the satisfaction of women police. Higgins et al. (2011) studied  the levels of job satisfaction among police managers. He found that the police managers have higher levels of job satisfaction than their line level counterparts indicate. Years of service, feedback on the job, and involvement in COP and/or Compstat programs were significant predictors of job satisfaction among this sample of police managers. It was found that the involvement in COP and/or Compstat programs has the ability to enrich the jobs of police managers. Dantzker’s (1994) conducted a survey on job satisfaction from twelve police departments in the six states (N = 552) and it was found that the police officer participants had low overall job satisfaction levels. The police officer had reported the greatest dissatisfaction with the pay and the least dissatisfaction with supervisory support Police.  The police officers who were in the age group of 20 and 25 were more satisfied as compared to other age groups. Study variables:

 

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY:

The purpose of the study is to know about the job satisfaction or dissatisfaction towards the various aspects of job like organizational policy and administration, behavior of supervisors, salary, and relationship with colleague, working condition, time for personal life, promotion, achievement, recognition and skill enhancement facilities.

 

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

The total of 50 police personnel has been randomly selected from the Chandigarh police and has been asked various structured questions to know about their job satisfaction with respect to various aspects of the job.

 

Practical Implications:

Findings of the study will be useful for the Chandigarh Police Administration to shape their policy regarding the police personnel and also for the better functioning after knowing the problems of police personnel.

 

LIMITATION OF THE STUDY:

The main obstacle the researcher had faced is that police personnel are often resistant to tell about any response regarding the questions asked in the questionnaire. Although the name of the respondent is not mentioned in the questionnaire but still the respondents were fearful about the confidentiality of the paper. So this can affect the exact response or the true feelings of the respondents leading to the skewing of the results. Another problem is the lack of participation from the police personnel. The responses were not as per of the expectations, only 50 questioners were filled off by the non gazette police personnel of Chandigarh. Further the research can be undertaken from the large sample size.

 

Personal Information of the respondents:

Out of fifty respondents the 27 were of head constable rank and 23 were constables. 27 police personnel were above the age of 30 and 9 were in the age of between 20 to 25 and the rest of 14 were from the age 25 to 30 years. The 23 police personnel were of graduate level and 7 were above graduation and the rest of 20 were of intermediate qualification.

 

Responses from the Police personnel:

Table 1.

Statement	Yes (%)	NO (%)
Satisfaction with the behavior of supervisors?	64	36
Satisfaction with the salary	92	8
Satisfaction with the relationship with colleague	74	26
Satisfaction with the working conditions	86	14
Time for personal life	32	68
Chances of promotion	42	58
Achievement in the department	64	36
Recognition for work	68	32

 

Table 2:

Statement	Satisfied	Neutral	Dissatisfied
Satisfaction with regard to organizational policy and administration	52	38	10
Satisfaction with regards to training on forensic skills	42	34	24
Updating training on technical skill	32	48	20
Law training	68	26	6
Various communication and motivational program	42	28	30

 

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS:

As it is well known that Chandigarh is famous for its greenery and safe environment, well planned infrastructure and roads etc. It is the beautiful city all over the India. The crime is very less as compared to other areas of the country because of efficient police force in the city. The rules are efficiently prosecuted by the Chandigarh Police. The violations of rules and law are very negligible in the city. As it was expected that the Chandigarh Police will be more satisfied towards their job as compare to the Police of other cities because of good organizational policy and administration and also the good working environment. The results fulfill the expectations because almost all the responses were in the favour of the Chandigarh Police Administration excluding one or two exceptions. More than half of the respondents were satisfied with the organizational policy and administration. 92 percent respondents were satisfied with the pay scale of the department which is really appreciable because the money or pay is the main issue for most of the department these days. 86 percents were satisfied with the working conditions while performing their job. 64 percent respondent are satisfied with their relationship with the supervisors but rest of are not satisfied. The dissatisfied police personnel think that the police supervisors carry their rank attitude and they do not show the good behavior with the juniors. 74 percent of the respondents are satisfied with their colleague but rest of 26 percent is dissatisfied because of the cooperation from their colleague. 64 percent of the police personnel are satisfied with their personnel achievement in the department but rest of them think that police department is responsible for their lack of the personal achievement in the department as compared to other reason like society or any personal reasons. Majority of the respondents i.e. 68 percent think that that they are recognized for their work but 32 percent think that work of those police personnel is recognized who believe in the buttering and are favorite of the seniors. 42 percent of police person are satisfied with their training on forensic skills and 34 percent show neutral responses and 24 percent were dissatisfied. In the case of updated training of law also majority i.e. 68 percent were satisfied and rest of 26 percent are having neutral responses and very few i.e. 6 percent were dissatisfied with the updated training of law. The respondents are not in majority for the training on technical skill i.e. only 32 percent of them are satisfied with the updated training skills and most of the respondents are neutral and 20 percent of them are dissatisfied. 42 percent are satisfied with the various communication skills and motivational programs run by the Chandigarh police and 30 percent of them show their dissatisfaction as compared to rest of the neutral responses.

 

Majority of the respondent i.e68 percent do not get time for their personal life which is important to consider by the department. The respondent suggested that they should have some flexibility in the working hours and should get some off from the duty so that they can spare some time for their personal life too and can avoid the stress of hectic job. The area of concern is promotion i.e. 58 percent is not satisfied with the department policy related to the promotion which should be change so that the time of promotion between two ranks can be decreased.

 

CONCLUSIONS:

As per of the various responses from the police personnel of Chandigarh it can be concluded that police personnel are satisfied with the various aspects of job like organizational policy and administration, pay, relationship with supervisors and colleague, training of forensic skills, law and other motivational programmes etc. But the responses are not in favors with regards to the promotional aspects and the time for personnel life where the police personnel are not satisfied . so these two issues needed to be resolved by the Chandigarh Police Department and there should be further research on this area on a large scale so that the generaziblity of the data can be assured.

 

REFERENCES:

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Aremu, A. Oyesoji(2006), “Impact Of Some Demographic Variables On Job Satisfaction Of  Women Police.

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